


Anything is Better Than Quiet

by HoneyJackal



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Oneshot, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-03 08:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8705266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneyJackal/pseuds/HoneyJackal
Summary: One shot to apologize for my absence because holidays are hell for me. A short story on how Gabriel and Jack start to get back on the same team, if you want a full rendition of this little snippet make a comment! I've adopted a few Headcanons into my own canonverse see if you can recognize them! I'll name the original minds behind them after I find them and get some time. Holidays are so busy for me... @_@





	

**Author's Note:**

> To my readers of Witchery: this isn't the same as a chapter but hopefully this canonverse can help. My headcanons have changed since Aftermath so this is my new canon for my canonverse stories vwv

Jack was sleeping for the first time in days, exhausted, broken, and cursing this damn cold for coming on now when he was so close. He had been on this field mission ever since he discovered how deep corruption ran through Overwatch Command. Now he was in Mexico City, having just torn his way through Dorado and then across the wilderness to get here, a dingy little motel on the outskirts. His mask was placed on the nightstand, and old scars wound over his body and disappeared beneath the sheets. His gun was within arm's reach, just in case. He didn't hear the door click and open though, he didn't hear the soft footsteps crossing the room and he didn't hear the water turn on or the stove; he didn't even hear the footsteps come into the bedroom. He didn't stir at all until he felt a hand on his head, and weight beside him on the bed. His entire body felt heavy as if he couldn't move. "Ngh..." he sluggishly opened his eyes which were blurry and unfocused. "...Gabe?" he muttered, not quite connecting the shadow standing over him with reality.

"Ay, cariño." He chuckled to himself, leaving a strong smelling cup of tea by his bedside and gently stroking his head. "you need to drink something."

"Later... got to move... too much to do," he mumbled, his eyes falling closed again.

" Shhh, mi sol, just drink..." He lifted his head and brought it to his lips. "Small sips...it's hot. There like that." Jack groaned a bit as he moved to drink, wheezing through his breaths, always just on the verge of waking up. This was definitely a dream. He was back in bootcamp, and Gabe was feeding him the best tea he'd ever had in his life. Every time Jack was sick he had made him this, apparently an old recipe from his grandmother, and her mother before her. Chamomile tea was the base, and then with a bit of mint, a touch of cayenne pepper, and a little cinnamon for taste the tea was made. It burned as it went down at first, but after a few sips, Jack's throat had always calmed its protests. It opened his throat, made the wheeze fade... and all from a man he thought came in to criticize him. A contented sigh left the old soldier and the black shadow chuckled softly as half the tea was gone. The cup made its way back to the nightstand. "Now, you need to rest..."

"Gabe," he muttered again, softer than before, "can't... just got a lead..." He was already falling back to sleep quickly, however, his breathing now much easier than before. "Don't go..." he mumbled, reaching for him like he used to, to pull him close and into bed. He was grasping at nothing though.

" What kind of lead?"

Gabe now wondered to himself, glancing about the room to see if he could use something to figure out what exactly Jack had found. He waited until the other fell asleep again before he stood and snooped around. There were a few papers scattered around, Jack had never been the most organized person, a few hid under his mask. They looked freshly penned and all was a line of the chain of command and the various branches of corruption from each individual. This one funded a gang, this one an omnic munitions plant, and another trading tech. Several of the smaller branches were crossed out, either leads that died or were long gone.  Gabriel recognized a few of the names and faces as people he offed. Jack had the same leads he did, but none of the organization Sombra did. He smiled softly and ran his fingers through Jack's hair.

"You're doing great Boyscout..." He kissed his head and sighed, "Wait for me, sol...luz de mi vida....I'll find you when this is over..." He helped Jack drink just a little more tea for his chest cold then slipped out the door in a cloud of mist.

 

The next morning, Jack's cold was seemingly gone, and the tea cup remained at his side. Everything else seemed to look the same as it had when he fell asleep. He called back to Headquarters as he promised, checking in so Ana wouldn't come running to find him. 

"Are you sure it wasn't a dream Jack?" Ana sighed over the phone, "As much as I would enjoy Gabriel acting I seem to remember him adamantly trying to kill us..."

Jack huffed as he packed up the room to chase his next lead. "Can't be sure of anything anymore, Ana," he grumbled into the phone, "It doesn't matter. I don't know what he's after but we're either in the way or we're not." But Jack could swear between his labored breathing that Gabriel was there, and the teacup on his nightstand didn't just appear out of nowhere.

" Just be careful Jack...we don't know what he wants. Is everything where you had it last night? Or is it all neatly stacked?" He could almost hear her smirking, " I know who kept your office clean." She teased, but this was important...if there was any stack that was neat then that's where they would find what Gabriel was looking for, if he had indeed snuck into the room. Jack huffed and stood slowly, half pulling on his jacket as he walked to where his papers were. Most of it was a mess, but there was one stack...the stack of people he was looking into. 

"He was looking at my leads," he muttered, "Fucking Reyes... always have to be one step ahead." He sighed and shifted through the paperwork, but nothing was missing. "It's all here though."

"Figures. Who do you think he would hit first...or better yet, who has he already taken care of?"

"My guess is all these people who keep showing up dead before I get to them," he muttered, growling in frustration as he threw the papers down. "It doesn't matter, I have another new lead. I need to get to the States."

"Is there anything dog eared or slightly holed that wasn't before?" Ana huffed, "We need a lead on Gabriel..."

Not that I can see," he muttered, "Reaper has been one step ahead of me. Only thing I can think of is going where he'd least expect....that actually might be my next move. I think it has to be." 

"I'll meet you there where are we headed?" Jack paused, looking over his list again. There was one place he avoided. One place he was sure Gabriel had already combed through the way he had.

"Switzerland," he grumbled, "either we'll find something new, he'll be curious enough to follow, or both."

"....Jack are you sure? You have scoured what's left of that place...unless you went deeper, but the building could fall on you. Do you want me to get Reinhardt too?" Ana murmured before her resolve seemed to harden. "He'll meet us there, I'll get a transport..."

 "No, I'm going in alone. You can secure the perimeter if you want, but I'm the only one risking a building on my head. We never secured any lab files, and if I know Reyes, he'll come sniffing as soon as he thinks I know something he doesn't." Jack huffed, "I'll take my own transport, and if you must come I'll meet you there." 

" Copy that." 

 

Jack knew exactly where to go, but he knew waiting around in the crater wasn't going to get Gabriel's attention. He was sure they'd both been back to comb through that part long enough. Beneath the crumbling foundation was the network of bunkers and testing facilities for any manner of weapons and craft. Jack expected it had already been cleaned out, but he knew Gabe was tracking him, and he knew that if he didn't find him up top, he'd find him down below. What Jack wasn't expecting was that despite the state of the building, some of the bunkers were intact. Command had to have cleaned out the relevant information by now though... or looters or anyone else. But the records room door was intact and locked. Jack didn't bother trying to pick it- a few bullets and he could kick the door in. Beyond, the room had been picked clean, but there were still computers. Computers he expected were still linked to Athena, even in their archaic form. He pressed power on one of the monitors, and then the computing unit attached, the computer kicked to life; and no, it wasn't connected to Athena as he hoped, but they were working on what it was supposed to be connected to.

_**PROJECT HORSEMAN administrative password required** _

****

Jack shouldered his gun, glaring at the screen. He had come here to lure Gabriel out of hiding, hoping that maybe instead of Reaper coming to kill Overwatch, Gabriel Reyes might come to Jack Morrison. This Project Horseman was nothing he'd ever seen or heard before, though. "I knew those fuckers were keeping something from me..." he growled out, glaring at the screen. He had nothing close to a password for it, but had plenty of time to search for clues in these bunkers. He stepped out of the records room, moving down the halls with his gun at the ready. Reyes might not be here yet, but that didn't mean this place wasn't protected by something else.

\---

There was a loud WHUMP and then the whole facility shook as the Talon drop ship he'd taken popped his pod out of the craft and onto the ground. Gabriel stepped out, signalling to Sombra that he was here with a simple cracking of hsi neck, then found his own way into the bunkers. He jumped down into a hole, but the chamber he landed in wasn't familiar...he froze, staring up at the largest bubble flask he'd ever seen...and the Blackwatch logo was peeling off of it. What was that for? Yet...he simultaneously had a feeling he knew what for. He wandered through the chamber, which was pretty much a giant pit that the flask was suspended over, and a control panel. He soon found a file laying on top of it with layers of dust covering it. It had a name on the front and when Gabriel took the file he found the letters in faint black ink: Reyes.

He quickly flipped it open and nearly dropped it. The first photo was of him dead in the wreckage, and being pulled out. The next was a series of glitching holotapes that were playing on a little tablet...of him being resurrected while Mercy screamed about something going wrong. Then they attempted to funnel him into the flask, but in his anger he shattered the first one...this was meant to contain him, and by the plans stated in this file, he was meant to be studied and turned into a pet project like poor Genji... It made him feel nauseous...but last page had a series of numbers...a password maybe? He tucked the file into his coat and turned away from the massive flask, leaving the chamber and moving out into the hallway. 

\---

Jack stumbled across a similar file in one of his former superior's offices. It wasn't a surprise that it was in that office, more that it had been left behind. Much of the information had been redacted, but he saw the pin code at the end. "Not very bright, were you?" he muttered, retracing his steps to the record room. Once there, he entered the code and waited. There had to be something relevant here. There had been a lot of classified information he'd never been able to look at, but he couldn't remember anything to this scale. Either it was one of Gabriel's top secret projects, or someone had been using Overwatch resources to do something outside of Blackwatch and his strike team...As he waited for the files to load, his first thought couldn't help but drift to Reyes and the last time they'd been here. He'd been so furious with him, as if Jack somehow had all the answers...

Soon all of the information Gabriel had read on popped up onto the screen...except plans on how to control him and drop him like a bomb into war zones was also on the screen. Plans to take a special operative and have him kill the men he worked with just to test him. He would wear a Blackwatch mask and an oxygen tank to keep the bots functioning at above normal rate. The worst part seemed to solidify everything the two had feared, the scientist writing all of this was a man who worked for Talon.

Gabriel would have been little more than a caged and angry animal. Jack found he could only stare in shock. He had nothing to download, no way to forward it to Ana or any of the other Overwatch members, but he didn't want to. Everyone already said he was crazy, and he knew they all thought of Reaper as a lost cause. Even discovering Reaper was Gabriel and he needed their help now more than ever didn't feel like enough. It made him sick deep inside though- he thought he'd left Reyes behind after finding out the hate he carried, but he couldn't help loving him still. 

Before Jack could take much more from the computer screen, a voice could be heard down the hall.

" Sombra...get a look at this..." He raised his mask slightly so she could catch the signal of the bots that composed him downloading the information. " Just between us...I'm going to try and trace some of this to Talon...Yea, thanks."

 "Just between us, then," Jack muttered, knowing those words weren't for him, but it would get Gabe's attention. He glanced up then dropped the file, papers floating everywhere.

" Jack..." He balled his fists then frowned, " I'm assuming you just saw this too?" He toed the file in his direction, his voice was raspy, but it wasn't as deep as it was when he played Reaper. When he used the alias for a mercenary. It felt like the old Gabriel, after some concert or intense training session when his voice would get gravelly. 

"Gabe," Jack replied with a nod, still holding his gun though it was lowered. His posture was alert. Just in case he was wrong... just in case... "I've seen more than that," Jack muttered, his voice still gruff but softer than usual. The explosion fucked up his face and vocal cords- there was no recovering from that. "Funny how easy it is to break into classified materials once you're not a member of the organization."

"Heh tell me about it..." the grim realisation of what he was to become to their superiors hung in the air between them. Thick and silent. Reaper felt as though he were a child caught red handed and yet...he stepped on the file and it's contents without hesitation, closing the distance between them, halting but a few steps away. Jack lifted his chin slightly to try and see him better through the visor. He'd rather take it off, but if Gabe was going to be masked, then so was he. Gabriel probably didn't want to see what had become of his pretty boy face anyway. "I have a mole of my own now though...I have ways of gathering information so long as I do a few favors..." He frowned, "Those stiff suits were silent until they were gone." he pointed two fingers like one of his guns. "I had to look through their private databases myself..."

"I know you did. I also know you've been tracking me," Jack muttered, "Always had to be one step ahead of me." He paused before nodding for Gabe to follow him to the record room. If anyone deserved to see the final plans Command had, Gabriel did. Besides, it had the link to Talon that he was looking for. "You know I didn't know a damn thing about Project Horseman, right?" he added as he stepped aside for Gabriel to see the computer, "They were planning on making me a casualty of it."

"Yea....I'm learning how much they kept from you...I knew more than you did." He huffed, "Their real operation was Blackwatch and Talon, Overwatch was a cover...do a little good and they forget all the bad. Didn't work so well..." He frowned, "They....already had a prototype chamber....they just needed me to die first." He looked over the target names and their last known locations. Everyone he served with, Jack, Ana, Genji, Jesse...people he didn't want to see die were there and the whole plan was to plant a virus in the premature nano machines to make him some kind of zombie...he handed Jack a device and huffed. "Plant that in the processing unit, Sombra can archive it and I'll have her send a drop to Athena....without a virus this time..."

"Am I to assume that we're actually working together? Or are you hoping to shove me into that prototype chamber?" Jack grumbled, looking over the device curiously. "We can use that sample to start figuring out how to help you, if you'll let us." He huffed and shook his head. "I'm not a young man anymore, but I'm not stopping until this is finished."

"For now. The device wouldn't work on you anyway....you're solid matter." He watched Sombra's emblem pop up and the protocol start to run, and then Sombra was in, extracting data on one stream and importing it to the drive on another. Reaper tilted his head slightly to activate the comms device inside the mask. "Easy enough?" He was speaking to her. "Let me know if I need to do something on my end...thanks." Jack could heard a woman's voice giggle on the other end of the line, and he wondered how quickly it had taken Gabriel to move on. He'd obviously cooled off- the old Reyes would have...The more Jack thought about it, the more he realized he didn't know what the old Reyes would have done.

Gabriel stood in stony silence for a few moments before he began to speak again.

"You're not a target anymore Jack....for Talon maybe...but not for me. You were a pawn, just like I was. Some semblance of comradery remains by that fact alone...I've done terrible things, and I'm not asking you to forgive me for what I've said or done to you....only that I realize I was wrong in assuming you were part of this." Reaper huffed before his voice softened again. "I have a part to continue playing though...if I want to get to the bottom of this hell hole then I have to keep going as if we never had this conversation or meeting. Sombra's devices can only jam their signals for so long, and only when it is as inconspicuous as possible." He huffed, "I won't make the same mistakes with her that I made with Mc-....With Jesse."

"You think I'm still just a lost little boyscout from Indiana, don't you?" he scoffed at Gabriel's words, "that I haven't seen, said, or done horrible things? I just haven't done it where someone is watching." He balled his fists and grit his teeth, "Leaving me out of the loop as you go, Reyes? Until you think I know something, then you break in and go through my notes or follow me to Switzerland?"

"Are you really that dense?!" He growled then took a deep breath and calmed, "Here I am apologizing and you somehow continue to think I'm shitting on you. I assumed that you would realize by now that I'm not loyal to Talon. We have the same leads, Jack. You're on the right trail, now I'll let you handle that and I can work on Talon...I'll have Sombra send you what I find out..."

Jack's brow furrowed. "I knew that much about you Gabe, but there's more I don't know," he muttered, "Like why you bothered coming to my room in Mexico. Why you bothered coming here." He paused for a minute, not knowing how to ask or say what he wanted to. It wasn't appropriate and it was over. It had been over for years, and Jack needed to let go of a romance that wasn't going to happen. They'd been through too much. "You risk your cover for nothing. Leads you already have. This down here was an accident," he muttered, "I figured it was clear. From the sound of it, you did too." He sighed and shook his head. "Forget it, it's not important. I got what I came here for," he stated, adjusting his stance, "If you want to keep working together, then you know how to reach me."

"Ay- Gabe, don't blow this," Sombra huffed into his comm, watching through Reaper's mask as Soldier: 76 started to walk away, "He may be a white-bread asshole, but he's your asshole." This snap back into reality prompted action. Gabriel caught Jack's arm and held it tightly. 

"Why do you think I was there? Really. Think hard with not just your head." He waited for Jack to relax before he slowly lifted the mask, just a little to show ashy, pale skin and a sickening decay over his left side. Jack didn't seem put off by Gabriel's look, only saddened by it. That handsome face he loved was gone, but the man was still here. Gabriel huffed and a frown crossed his lips before he took the drive as it finished and held it out to him. Next he took a piece of paper and origami folded it into an envelope. Then he peeled some of the decay off his face and popped it in there. "If anyone can save me it's you, before I'm gone for good...I can't be around you like this, no one wants to be labeled a necrophiliac." He teased Jack, his smile soft while the rest of his face was shadowed by the mask. Glowing red eyes dimmed to a soft honey brown and a shaking sigh left the mercenary. "....Don't give up on us just yet, Jack. Not like I did, I...I hoped looking after you would have been a big enough hint..." 

Jack took the paper and the drive slowly, but he set it aside on a dusty table near them. Instead, he unclipped his own mask.

"I don't give a shit if I'm labelled or not. I've been trying to quit you for years, Gabriel. I can't," he muttered as he pulled his mask off. Gabriel had seen all of the scars before from his sneaking around- a permanent mark that Jack was marred by the explosion too. What he hadn't seen was that Jack's eyes were light, milky blue, not the rich ocean blue they'd been before. A soft intake of breath marked Gabriel's surprise. "I know you don't trust her, but Mercy kept me from going blind. I think she can help you," he muttered, though he still seemed to have a little trouble focusing. It was like looking through a haze or a permanent cloth over his eyes.  He was suddenly hesitant, but he drew closer, cupping the good side of Gabriel's face and kissing him. Jack didn't care that it tasted unpleasant, he didn't care what anyone would think or say. He felt Gabriel's body tremble against him a moment, as if about to break down or completely disintegrate, but he remained standing. "I tried giving up. Didn't ever take. Never will," Jack murmured as he drifted back.

"Mi sol..." Gabriel had whispered, it came rolling off the tongue so easily and for a moment time rolled backwards.

Jack wanted to go further, he'd go anywhere, just for a minute. He nearly choked at hearing his old pet name. "I missed you so fucking much..." Gabriel was so careful with the claws on his gloves, but he cupped Jack's face and gently kissed him back, letting their lips linger just a little longer. There were years between this and the last kiss he experienced, he closed his eyes and leaned against Jack. 

"When this is over..." he sighed and pulled the mask back down. "Until then, I'll continue missing you." 

 

Leaving hurt, it cut deep and left a gaping hole in his chest, but he couldn't risk it yet. He needed to take Sombra with him at least, if he couldn't break Amelie's conditioning then he would kill her.

"Don't say a word." Gabriel scoffed into the com, but it was lighter, he was happy and genuine, Sombra had only seen it a few times when Gabriel worked with her.

Sombra giggled softly. "Ahhh, amor! So sweet and pure," she teased with a soft smile, "Admit it, Papi, you have it bad and it isn't going to get better."

"I'm on my way home, let me know what you find in there." 

 "Oh all kinds of things. Let's discuss over dinner," she teased, "for now, you just keep thinking of your sweet boyscout." He snickered at her, vowing that revenge would come and it would be swift and sweet. 

 

 


End file.
